


Uttering Joyous Leaves

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Professions, Environmentalism, First Meetings, M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lone trustee of a nature preserve donated after a long and contentious battle between a development magnate and environmental activists, Greg has resigned himself to a certain unthinking solitude.  When the magnate's grandson drops into his life with nothing to do and a chip on his shoulder, however, he begins to wonder whether the land is enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blanketfortheshock](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=blanketfortheshock).



> _For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,_  
>  Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,  
> I know very well I could not.
> 
>  
> 
> Walt Whitman, "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing."

There was a man in the road, as sudden and oblivious as a deer, and Greg struck his foot down on the brake with a lurch that put a pain in his ribs. The jeep swerved, stopped. Its front wheel spun a gash into the soft earth just off the side of the rough pavement. And Greg watched, breathless and clinging to the steering wheel, as the man turned and looked at him through the windscreen – calm as you please – and then came round to the passenger side door, swung it open, and hopped in.

"Good job you stopped by," he said, tugging with both hands at the front of his ripped and filthy T-shirt. "Have you got something I can borrow? I'm meeting someone in town."

Greg stared. His heart refused to stop pounding, though the danger was past, and this – this skinny _idiot_ looked like he hadn't so much as skipped a beat.

"Did you not hear me?" Greg asked, rather louder than he'd meant to in his incredulity, swinging one arm out toward the deep woods that stretched away on either side of the road. They were nearly silent, dark green and drowsing in the late summer heat; even the birds wouldn't pipe up until twilight. And his was, as a matter of law, the only car on the road.

The man shrugged, and pushed a mass of dark, sweaty hair away from his forehead – leaving behind a peat-black smear of dirt. "I wasn't really paying attention. You're the ranger, anyhow," he said, giving a pretty damn cheeky little salute. "Isn't it sort of a piece of your job, not to go hitting animals willy-nilly when they step out of the forest?"

"My job doesn't get much easier with people like you wandering around places they shouldn't be." It was difficult to look imposing in a dirty T-shirt (in an only mildly better state than his passenger's), his work trousers, and a pair of sunglasses that could flatteringly be called _functional_ , but Greg edged up in his seat all the same. This fellow was maybe twenty-five, cool as a cucumber and probably just as at home with high tea, and bore the stamp of a certain twatty brand of toffs with which Greg was all too familiar. You had to pull them up fast, like weeds, or they took root and stayed. "I'll take you to the gatehouse. You know no one's permitted to be –"

"It's my land, I can be where I like."

"Oh, for God's sake." Like father, like son, apparently – or grandson, by the look of him. "You're a Fairburn, are you? Never seen you before."

"Holmes, actually. Mother's the Fairburn."

"Well, it's not your land, in any case." Greg put the Jeep into reverse and took it back onto the road, glancing into the rear-view mirror just in case he should happen upon an animal he _didn't_ feel like hitting with a car. "That's what _donation_ means. It's a nature reserve, not your personal park. You want to come in, you can schedule a tour like everyone else." Or no one else, but that was rather beside the point.

Holmes glanced over at him with a look that was more interested than affronted – an edge of a smile, even. "I'll be sure to tell them you said so."

"Do. Maybe one of them will finally notice I'm trying to do my damned job." He'd long since passed the point of caring whether he was on good terms with his employer (or, more accurately, funder); it was some thirty years gone, and Greg had never had any illusions – not then, not now – about who actually gave a damn about the land. If he didn't stand up for it, no one was going to. "And that if you're going to have one person to keep six hundred acres, you could at least give him a pay rise now and again."

"Hm." Holmes crossed his legs, adopting a posture that was almost cartoonishly aloof as they proceeded along the winding service road. "You need the help, do you?"

"Of course I do. It's ridiculous – one man for a space this size. Irresponsible." It was simply overwhelming; often, standing in a thick spot in the woods, surrounded by the brush and ancient mulch all closed under the dim canopies of trees, he thought he could hear it – actually hear it – growing out of his control. His trust, escaping him – decaying in his very ears. It had always been too much for one man, but from the one-room house (once the gamekeeper's, and little better than an equipment shed when Greg had taken up residence so very long ago) he had an unabating view of the decline. It had grown worse, more constant. There wasn't a day he didn't see it.

"Well, you won't get a pay rise. Not out of grandfather." Holmes flipped down the visor, made to wipe the dirt off his forehead – and stopped, as though he'd thought better of it. "My allowance hasn't budged for four years."

"What a tragedy."

"A stroke of luck, for you. I'll help you."

Greg laughed.

Holmes bristled. "You're hardly in a position to –"

"What are you – here for the summer? Off to the country house to cool off for a month or two?" Greg shoved his sunglasses back into his hair as they passed into a solid tunnel of beeches. "It isn't trimming hedges." Nor was it standing about with a gin and water making snide remarks while other people played tennis, which was about all he could imagine Holmes getting up to in the way of exercise. 

Holmes held out his reddened hands, looked pointedly down at his ruined shirt. "Do I look like I've been trimming hedges?"

Greg made a show of sparing him a long, appraising look before turning his eyes back to the road. With some solemnity, he replied: "You look like you've been going around on all fours hunting mushrooms."

Holmes sniffed, and turned his nose up at the window. "For your information," he said, smooth and a little chilly, "I was helping a nestling back to its nest."

"Oh, Jesus."

" _Frankly_ ," Holmes snapped, "I don't care one way or another whether you have the help. I'll be out here every day, regardless – and as you've been so keen to point out, one man for six hundred acres doesn't give you very good odds of finding me and shoving me off again. So I can come and entertain myself – which I will most certainly do, considering the alternative is three-hour lunches listening to questions along the line of why I can't be more like my sainted brother – or you can take a favor when it's offered, and save yourself the chance of stumbling across me with a chainsaw, or whatever it is you wave around this place trying to make it halfway presentable."

 _Don't tempt me_ , Greg almost said; but he kept his mouth shut. There was something a little pitiable in that prickly, pompous mess. Not much, of course, but something – even if it was only that the prospect of spending any number of hours with those people was enough to give him hives. Maybe it wasn't any better if you were one of them; he couldn't possibly know. If someone wanted to tramp around outdoors instead of slowly absorbing the toxins the Fairburns exuded at the pores, could he blame him? 

Holmes looked utterly hopeless, though. Greg couldn't imagine he'd be any good. But – well. He rather liked doing people favors.

"Meet me at seven, then," he said, after what he deemed to be a sufficiently reluctant pause. "In the morning, mind you. At the gatehouse. Don't wear anything you care about."

Holmes grinned. The scornful stiffness melted out of him so quickly Greg briefly entertained the suspicion it had all been for show. "Excellent," he said, cranking his window down as they passed back into the sun. "Grandfather will _hate_ it."


	2. Chapter 2

Holmes was, for the most part, hopeless. But he presented himself at the gatehouse a few minutes before seven o'clock in the morning, looking more game and less bleary than Greg had expected, particularly considering he'd walked the mile and a half from the main house. He had even brought his own lunch. And if he didn't appear to have any idea how to handle any of the tools Greg kept safely out of his hands, he was a fast learner when it came to everything else – might in fact have been one of the cleverest men Greg had ever met. That was no real surprise, considering what a cunning son of a bitch Fairburn had always been, and certainly it manifested itself in ways obnoxiously reminiscent of the old bastard whenever the kid opened his mouth. But after about two hours of hauling branches, he was only opening his mouth to breathe; and Greg thought they fell into a rather companionable rhythm.

Around eleven, the rhythm had slowed to something like a crawl. That was to be expected – no matter how much honest effort a man had in him, if he hadn't done a day's work in his adult life, he could only go for so long. Another half hour in and it was quite clear that Holmes wouldn't be the one to cry uncle, however, so Greg crouched to set away his saw, wiped his face with the front of his shirt, and called over to where Holmes was struggling to make a clumsy-looking bundle with a bale of plastic twine. "You hungry?"

Holmes dropped the twine at once; the unbound side of his bunch of branches fanned out like a sheaf of wheat. "I could eat," he gasped. When he straightened to pull the back of his arm across his forehead, one foot planted on either side of that unwieldy pile of sticks, his shirt clung to his sides in crooked drapes. And if the working gloves he'd borrowed were too big, and the shoes meant for another kind of workout entirely, still – he looked almost as though he belonged here. 

To his surprise, Greg felt a little rush of pride for him. He could see, now that Holmes' face was slack with effort, too exhausted for affectation, the way his lower lip hung full, the flare of his nostrils – and it was a face he knew. Holmes wasn't the spitting image of his grandfather, but the resemblance was a marked one. It was a face he'd seen red with anger rather than exertion; but more usually cruel and pale, with a cutting little smile overwhelmed in condescension – cold, flat, unmoved. And yet he was proud. Was it pride? Was it simply some warped sense of triumph? _Got your hands dirty now, haven't you, you posh fuck?_

He turned away, a little baffled with himself, and went to fetch their lunches out of the back of the jeep.

There was a rocky hill about a quarter of a mile away, and he egged Holmes on toward it with the promise of a bit of a breeze. The reserve itself was quite flat, so from that modest promontory one could see much of the expanse of wood. They sat under the massive plane tree that had shot up some century before to take advantage of the extra sun, and they watched through the slight haze of humidity as increasingly gray clouds piled up on the western horizon.

After half a sandwich and his share of the jug of water, Greg decided Holmes was probably capable of conversation again. "So," he said, peeling a strip of tinfoil back from his own lump of roast beef, "what did they say when you told them you were off to play in the mud?"

"I didn't tell them." Holmes was leaning against the trunk of the tree into a depression that might have been grown for him, arms folded behind his head. "I expect they'll think I've gone into town, when I don't come down for breakfast." He stretched his legs out in front of him – filthy jeans and blackened trainers – and smiled. "Won't they be surprised."

Greg snorted. "I'd say to give them all a hello from me, but you probably won't have to."

"Oh, you never know. People can be astoundingly obtuse when it suits them." He let his head fall to one side, turning his eyes on Greg with an interest that was a little sly. "How do you know them? Not just the job, I expect. You're one of grandfather's dirty tree-huggers, aren't you."

"That's right." Greg took a large bite of his sandwich, not entirely sure he wanted to meet that look. For several moments he was silent, chewing. "Didn't much like the thought of this place becoming a golf course."

Holmes pushed himself up on the heels of his palms, leaning forward; when Greg glanced over at him the curiosity on his face was plain enough that, despite himself, Greg warmed to it. It wasn't every day people looked at him like that – it wasn't every _year_. "I've heard the story from one side, of course," Holmes said. "You lot came and invaded the property like – _like rats in a pantry_ , is usually his favorite way of putting it. Or vultures, on occasion."

Greg laughed. "Oh, we were eagles. Sitting in trees with one pair of binoculars for about ten of us, watching for his thugs coming down the road." It had been pretty grand, at the time. Now the thought of the forest ringing with human voices was strange – but in those days, he could imagine no more natural way to exist. "He still owned half the county back then. He hadn't sold it all off for shopping malls and parking lots yet – but it was obvious he wanted to. And we thought –"

"You thought you'd stop him."

A beat passed as Greg scanned those words for mockery. But Holmes' face was just as eager as before, and even a little pleased – and it was hard to feel anything but flattered by the attention. "Sure," Greg said, shrugging with an embarrassed sort of pride he hadn't experienced in ages, and which he still knew better than to believe, or ought to have. "It seemed different back then. I don't know. One victory felt bigger than it should have. We thought, if we wore him down here, it would just fall together. Like dominoes."

"And did you actually stay there? Up a tree?"

"For three weeks." Greg grinned at him. "Smelled terrible."

Holes slumped back against the tree trunk, shutting his eyes against the sun, and drew in a deep breath with eye-catching satisfaction. "Oh, we simply must have you over for dinner."

"I doubt my table manners are up to his standard." Suppressing a grimace, Greg finished off his sandwich in one more go. "Mm. Don't think I've ever spent more than thirty civil seconds with him."

"And yet," Holmes said, a small furrow sinking between his brows, "he hired you. And here you are."

"Here I am." Greg smiled at him, taking the opportunity while Holmes' eyes were shut to linger a little on his face. He looked for all the world as though he were puzzling it out, his mouth a little pinched, his forehead creased. As though it were important, and not just some distant detail in the life of one man retired in the middle of an ever-darkening nowhere. It made him want to answer, to lay out the details that had for so long been relegated only to his own examination for the approval of someone who was little more than a stranger. "He meant it as an insult, I think. When he made me the offer, when he finally gave in, he said to me – _if you want to live like a bloody peasant, by God, I can oblige you._ He had to think he'd won somehow, I suppose."

"Hm." Holmes smiled – but after a moment, it took on a peculiar cast. "And what did your friends think of that? The rest of your eagles?"

"I lost a few," Greg admitted. It was an understatement, and a foolish one – he wasn't ashamed of what he'd done. He corrected himself. "Most of them, actually. They called it 'selling out,' which was rubbish. For better or for worse, he owned the whole place – a donation was the best anyone could have hoped for. Plenty of them had been getting it into their heads that if we slashed enough tires, spiked enough trees, set up enough traps …" He let that thought trail off, not particularly keen on remembering. 

Holmes arched an eyebrow. "Sounds rather nasty."

"It was. They'd have turned it into a war – if they'd had their way, we'd have been guerrillas. It was –" _Ridiculous_ was the word he'd used at the time; that, and _horrifying_. Looking back, the mere thought of what might have happened had someone actually fallen afoul of any of that sabotage was enough to make his throat tighten against remembered nausea. He'd refused to participate in any of it, but that wouldn't have absolved him. He had been in league with them, and would have stood by them, too. "We had – disagreements."

"Indeed." Holmes opened his eyes and shielded them with one hand, leaving visible only his mouth with its flat smile. "And then grandfather came and offered you the land and a conservatorship, did he?"

"He did. I took it, too. It was the best way to keep the place as it was – the safest way." Not wishing to paint himself too much the hero, he added: "And I'd done my bit in jail by then, too, you know. Just a few nights here and there, but – jobs weren't exactly going to come jumping out at me."

"So you had little choice," Holmes said, sounding not at all surprised. "And I imagine it split your friends into two camps, didn't it, considering your 'disagreements'?"

"It – yeah." Greg crushed his leftover tinfoil between his palms. "Sure, it did."

" _So_ , objective achieved, golf course avoided, you took up your position and your friends, now quite splintered, vacated the premises. To do what, exactly?"

"Grow up," Greg replied, a little terse, at once a bit defensive and self-deprecating. "And get real jobs, mostly. One or two started writing for papers, I think."

"Not dropping dominoes?"

He paused. "No." No; that had been their first, their last, their only positive result. "But – he couldn't have known he'd get that lucky. We we're stupid, we put up a united front for him and his –"

"Oh, I'm sure you weren't the only one who needed money." Shoving himself up again, Holmes lurched to his feet and stretched, unsticking his shirt from his back and brushing the dirt and bits of bark from the backs of his legs. "People can be just as venal as they can be obtuse. And now all the dominoes are – shopping malls and parking lots, just as you said." 

Greg sat beneath him, watching his shadow lean back and forth across the mass of roots in the ground. "You're a cunning one," he said at last, feeling rather numb. "Like him."

"Well, you're hardly a master strategist. But some things, alas, _do_ run in the family."

"Right." How much, he wondered. "Businesses tend to, for starters."

"They do. That's my brother, though – didn't I tell you? He's perfect in every way. Not I. _I_ am the dilettante, the embarrassment, the no-good-at-parties, the veterinary college drop-out." 

"What – seriously?" Greg tried to imagine him in a whitecoat; somehow, it wouldn't stop drooping off his shoulders like a hand-me-down school blazer. "Why? You might have done something with that."

With a huff, Holmes threw himself down on the grass again, stretching out on his stomach and throwing Greg a stiff look from where his chin was propped on his wrists. "Yes, _thank_ you, mother. As I told her, and all the other fifty people who seemed to think it was any of their business – I stopped because it was boring and the company was insufferable." He made quite a sight lying there, mussed and a little pink; when he seized a twig and started at the ground in front of him, Greg had the urge to draw his feet back out of range. "Unlike my grandfather, I have no interest whatsoever in picking apart human motivations. I don't know the first thing about how people move through their incomprehensible lives, and I couldn't possibly care less if I tried."

Greg thought he seemed keen enough when it came to _human motivations_ , but he neglected to say as much. "You prefer animals, I take it."

"Yes. Unfortunately, the college wasn't administered by a flock of sheep – just a pack of men doing a sad impression." He pressed his lips together. "I do prefer animals. Wild ones, if possible."

"You'll find those, out here. Nothing out of the ordinary, of course. Your deer, your fox." _Wolves_ , he thought, as that circle of faces – friends – flashed through his mind, all half-hidden under the tattered shadows of leaves. He'd been obtuse – which one had been venal? "Don't get too close."

"Yes, thank you ever so much for the advice." 

"Here's some more." Greg dropped the jug of water right in front of him. "Keep hydrated, unless you want to be carried home over my shoulder like a sack."

Holmes smiled – broad, lopsided, and strikingly mischievous. He uncapped the jug, tipped it up, and drank – and promptly spilled about half of it down his shirt.


End file.
